The Strongest Payout
by jetembrasse
Summary: If Cal and Gillian took the leap mid-season two. Set around 209 - "Fold Equity" - in Vegas, with flashbacks to D.C.
1. Chapter 1

**This story is set in Vegas around episode 209, "Fold Equity." A lot of stories for this pairing's confessions are very natural and romantic (and they're lovely), but I thought I'd write something that unfolded rather messily, as if Cal's worst fears, the things that keep him from acting on his feelings, unfolded in reality (but not forever). Rated M for later chapters, I own nothing. Enjoy!**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter One<strong>

_When you flop a set but there's a flush draw possible, you have to play it fast._

* * *

><p>"Double zero or nothing, Ben. I mean it."<p>

As soon as he heard the door click firmly shut, Cal looked up at Gillian. She was staring intently at the monitors, her fingertips brushing the track pad, zooming in and adjusting the focus on Poppy's face. It was cold, she noticed, like a figurine; her waxy peach lips set on matte skin. She felt the urge to drag her nails against it, collecting the wax underneath.

"Foster."

She squinted her eyes, leaned in closer to the screen, and made a note.

"Foster."

She crossed out the earlier note and made another.

"I can do this all night," he said, kicking his legs up onto the couch.

Nothing.

"You're upset. About Poppy."

"Gosh, you're perceptive," Gillian mumbled, typing at the keyboard, eyes trained in front.

He sighed loudly and got up, grabbed the back of her barstool and spun it around.

"Cal!" she yelled, pushing him backwards so he tripped over the arm of the couch. An anger Gillian rarely saw when he was around her flashed briefly in his eyes.

"All right, all right," he said, brushing himself off and moving toward her again, reaching for her. She jumped off her seat and stepped out of his grasp, but he was just as soon back in her personal space, undeterred. She pressed her hands flat against his chest and pushed him back again. Once, twice, three times, with increasing force.

_"All right!"_ Cal repeated. He held her smaller hands tightly in his and stared at her with his head tilted, licking his lips.

"Oh, don't do that with me," Gillian pushed him backwards again, the power coming through her restrained hands. "You don't think I know all your tricks?"

Finding his balance, he stood for a moment, just looking at her, a question on his face.

The irritation cloaked her features. "Smothering?" she spat his word back at him.

She held his stare for a moment before turning away, sighing for what he presumed was everything he'd ever done, walking to the opposite couch, laying out, and rolling her eyes to the ceiling.

"Look, we never said…" He rolled his tongue around in his mouth, weighed the air with his hands, more disgusted with himself each second. "We never said we were…_ exclusive_."

She was silent. He felt sick.

He turned to shut off their eyes on the other rooms, one screen at a time. Four clicks and the mechanical whine died down until the only sound in the room was the quiet hum of the air conditioning and her irregular breathing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

* * *

><p>He hated himself, instantly and rather continuously – or at least every time he glanced at her – for letting it happen this way. For handling it like it was just like anything else, for not having it in him to tell her the truth, for taking advantage of her for his own gain, just so he could relieve the seven-year itch. To relieve all that time he spent <em>wanting her<em>, worse than he's ever wanted anything, wanting her in his hands and no one else's. Just so he could finally taste the salt on her skin, so he could feel her around him, so he could hear her scream his name, know what she sounded like when she came.

Half of him was hoping that once would be enough; that if he could just have her one time he would never want her again, like the others. _Idiot._ Immediately after he left he had broken down. He'd closed her door behind him, locked himself out with the key she'd given him for emergencies, sunk down against the brick of the outside wall, and hated himself more than he'd ever hated himself.

She had been beautiful, amazing, perfect. She had been more than he'd ever dreamt (_and you bet your ass he'd dreamt_).

But somehow it was all wrong.

Wrong enough for a whole bottle of single malt and, subsequently, a whole day of vomiting.

* * *

><p>"You're supposed to drink that stuff with water."<p>

_It's lowland, darlin', no water needed. Light as a feather._

She had come to his house at an undetermined time the day after, appeared upside down against the doorframe of his bathroom. He blinked, her blurry figure coming into focus. There was that wonderful feeling that filled his chest in that moment between wondering who it was and knowing concretely _it was her_, that feeling that started the day he met her and never wore off, a feeling like a deep breath when you've been underwater forever.

She seemed just as beautiful as the day before, somehow unmarred by their encounter. He thinks her dress was pink, but he had to close his eyes again quickly to keep the walls from spinning.

He could manage one syllable.

"_Gil_."

"Cal.

"Y'Ok?"

He just groaned.

She released her Dooney & Burke from her grip and dropped to the floor beside it, her legs underneath her. The simple, soft sounds of her movement soothed his aching head. Her cool hand was suddenly resting against his clammy temple, her fingers running through his hair in short strokes. From the soft leather she pulled a bottle of water and pressed it against his forehead.

"_Gil._" The weight and timbre of the word seemed to tell her everything.

"It's ok."

Tentatively rolling onto his stomach, he made a half attempt to sit up on his elbows, made it about half an inch, and slumped back, facedown against the cold tile. The room went dark.

"_I'm so sorry."_

Gillian heard a soft sob, and her instincts began to fire on all cylinders. She lightly clucked her tongue.

"Cal, honey, it's ok."

He had no idea if they would make any difference, but the three words stayed stuck in his throat on the assumption that the right time wasn't while she held him on his bathroom floor, nor while she gently rubbed his back as he emptied his stomach into the toilet, nor as she helped him hydrate after.

That didn't make them any less true.

* * *

><p>The days and weeks that followed were probably the most desperate of his adult life. The guilt overwhelmed him, a remnant from the church he'd long since abandoned, somehow bound up only in his allegiance to the two most important women in his life.<p>

She seemed the same, somehow, supremely resilient against his wrecked figure. Still tied up like a Christmas present in her little outfits with her clipped gait and shining intellect, still able to function just as well as before.

Thoughts, feelings clogged inside him, slowed his days, brought him back to the bottle when he didn't have to be a dad for the night, falling, falling, until finally she caught him. Like she had so many times before.

After a particularly disastrous client meeting (one in which he sat slumped in his chair, hardly able to look at her, let alone respond, hardly able to piece things together), she pushed him into a secluded wall and cracked a slap against his face. Not enough to leave a mark, but certainly enough to wake him from the fog.

"Oi!" he cried out, holding his cheek.

"Snap out of it!" she demanded, holding his chin so he had to face her.

He blinked, squinted, looked down.

"No! You need to look at me."

He hesitated only a moment.

"Ok. Listen. Don't speak. You need to stop this. This nihilistic, self-defeating, guilty thing you've got going on, you need to stop it. I am a big girl, Cal. You didn't force me to do anything. I _chose_ to do what we did, and if I wanted to I could have stopped it at any second."

She let her statement sink in, eyes darting to examine his face.

"Ok? Get back to work."

She released his collar, and turned on her heel. He couldn't help himself, and watched her as she walked away. The world disappeared just as it always had.

He wanted to stop wanting her. Not looking her in the face ebbed his pain, but that meant more looking down at her body. More than anything he wanted his eyes to stop automatically trailing down the seams of her dress, resting in the bowl of her hips, examining the lines of her legs. He wanted to stop the chemical storm that roused in him at every look or brush. He wanted to stop the flash of images that fanned out in his mind, the ones of throwing her against whatever piece of furniture or structure was nearest and taking her, worse now that he knew what she felt like, the sounds she made.

He tried not to notice the things that had always killed him about her – her bare neck, the blunt ends of her soft bob against its porcelain, her narrow shoulders and their delicate, wing-like blades in her cocktail dresses, the sharp vertebrae of her graceful spine with that perfect posture, _those legs_. His kryptonite. Who was he kidding? Wanting her, having her, not having her, possibly losing her... Gillian, Gillian, Gillian. It was all too much.

He should never have mettled in the one relationship with the person who had never left him, who had promised to never leave. The one who meant everything.

* * *

><p>Still, he managed to convince himself that everything was <em>fine<em> until the levy broke. Vegas. Poppy. Ben.


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorry for the wait! Here's chapter three, finished today. The flashbacks are set around the end of season one (Episode 112 - "Blinded") and the beginning of season two. Chapter four's in progress; it won't be long I promise.**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Three<strong>

* * *

><p>"<em>We never said we were… exclusive."<em>

Gillian hesitated to process the words, knowing now the complete sentence would cause an anger in her she didn't want to understand. She closed her eyes, took a shaky breath, and tried to untangle how she got to be where she was.

* * *

><p>"Alec." She heard his unmistakeable accent across the room.<p>

"Cal?"

"Um, is Gillian here? I just wanted to see, you know, if she was all right. After today."

She could see the hesitation in her husband's body language, but knew he knew that sometimes there was nothing he could do when it came to she and Cal. She knew it hurt him; her marriage was longer than their friendship. Still, he moved away from the doorframe and gestured to where she was sitting in the den.

She watched as Cal's face changed as he got closer to her. She was sure she wasn't the prettiest picture, with violet bruising discoloring the skin of her neck in finger-shaped arrangements and a laceration stitched up with thick black thread on one side of her forehead. The color drained from his already-worn face. She noticed the circles under his eyes.

"Have you slept at all?" It had been as tough a day for him as it had for her, she reasoned.

He was instantly next to her on the couch, still staring at her face. His breathing grew heavy and ragged, and he lifted his hand as if to touch her, but quickly brought it back to his knee. She noticed Alec still standing behind them. He was moving his weight from foot to foot and clenching and unclenching his fists. She wished for a moment it was jealousy, but knew the real reason.

"Gil? I've got to get going on that meeting," he called over to her, looking between she and Cal as he shrugged on his coat. She watched him go through the motions of lining his pockets with bureaucrat credentials and swallowed at the pitiful act. Cal knew, she knew. Her face fell into the smallest frown before she wiped it away, nodding and giving him her best reassuring smile. "Of course. I'll be fine."

Cal didn't try to hide his scowl – he never had, with Alec – as he watched him leave, his mouth falling open in disbelief. When he heard the door shut, he turned back to her. She didn't have the energy to defend anyone right now, and just shrugged her shoulders and looked at the ceiling. Before she could stop herself her eyes began to water, and she reached up with her slung arm to wipe them dry. His head tipped forward.

"_Gil_."

She knew he wouldn't try to fill their silence with excuses, and was grateful for the quiet. She shook her head. The weight of the gesture stabbed Cal in the chest.

He looked at the clear glass coffee table parallel to their seat. "Let me make you a cup of tea, love," he said, and got up to walk away.

A strike of fear ran through Gillian's anger, and she bolted upright. "Hold on," she said, gripping his forearm before going to lock the deadbolt and rejoining him. "Let me go with you."

He slipped his hand around her waist as they walked into the kitchen, where he pulled her out a seat at their dinner table and brought their kettle out of an upper cabinet. She watched his figure, shoulders sharp in his black overcoat, leaning over the sink. As the water boiled, Cal set two mugs in front of her, mementos from a trip they'd taken a decade ago. She swirled the ceramic rim against the tabletop, _First Annual European Conference on Psychological Assessment_, as they waited for the kettle to whistle.

"Hungry?" he asked, thinking he already knew the answer when it came to his friend, but she just made a vague gesture, her eyes glazed over. He walked over to open their fridge and smiled at Gillian's rather orderly and ambitious sweet tooth. "I think your eyes are bigger than your stomach, love," he commented, deciding on something that might not upset that stomach after the day's events, almond biscotti. With the other hand he opened a small cabinet to retrieve a bottle of Tylenol. When she heard the shaking of the pills stop, Gillian looked up. He was frozen, his arm suspended in the air and his eyes stuck on the counter. She knew instantly he'd seen the legal papers –_** Irreconcilable Differences **_in emboldened font – and watched as he tried to pretend he hadn't.

He poured two cups of steaming water onto the Tetley she kept for his visits, pushed two pills and cookies toward her, and moved his chair so he was close enough to wrap his arm around her back again. He sipped his cup quietly, his eyes never leaving her. When she ignored the spread, he leaned in closer. "You're gonna want to drink that," he whispered. "It's imported. Very expensive." His chest eased when she smiled a small smile. She took a sip and felt the warmth burn her throat as she leaned against the hard back of her chair, closing her eyes. A shuddered breath ran through her, and Cal's frown returned. They sat in silence for what felt like hours.

A small seed of anger began to spin in Gillian's stomach at everything that had gone so wrong. She was tired of forgiving everyone and everything. She couldn't help but wonder how things had gotten so twisted, how her best friend seemed to care more about her than her own husband, who hadn't come to the hospital, who couldn't stay with her, even on a night when she'd almost died. Cal could be an ass sometimes, sure, but he was always the net at the bottom. He was flawed, _was he ever_, but he could love like no one else she'd ever met, the only person she'd ever known who loved as hard as she did, who she could give everything to and know he would be grateful for every inch, even if he didn't show it. She curled against him and felt his arm tighten around her, bringing her own around his stomach and nestling her head into his chest.

"_Thank you_."

He ruffled her hair lightly.

"No need to thank me, darlin'. This is the least you deserve."

After a minute, he spoke again.

"I want you to call me every time he goes out like that, all right? You don't feel safe, you call me, ok?"

She thought about an argument involving feminism and independence, but knew he wouldn't have any of it.

"Ok," she mumbled against his chest, knowing she wouldn't, couldn't.

"Ok," he repeated, downing his cup and knowing the same.

* * *

><p>Despite her will to refrain, she did call him. She couldn't help it. She was alone in her new address, her life in boxes around her, with a glass of red in her hand. She never drank red. Blame it on the end of her childless marriage, she thought dryly.<p>

"Foster?"

"Cal."

"What's wrong?" he always asked that.

"Nothing," she always responded, but this time her voice was shaky.

"Two minutes."

When she opened the door, Cal looked around at the bare apartment.

"Right. Unpack or flee?"

She laughed despite herself. "Um," she thought, her mind slowed with wine. "Flee?"

He watched her down the rest of her glass and set it on the nearby mantle; she opened her mouth in a wide smile he hadn't seen in _years_, her white teeth offsetting the lurid stain of her lips.

"Flee it is then," he replied, grabbing her by the waist. The heavy midsummer rain came down on them in what felt like waves, soaking their clothes.

"Had to be Georgetown, didn't it? Your _singles flat_," Cal complained as they jogged the half-mile to his parked car. She laughed again. It seemed to be the only response she could generate. "Bloody awful," he laughed too, his face relaxing. He hadn't realized until she finally was able to let go of some of it how much of her pain he'd bundled up into his own. He felt as he thought she probably did at that moment, a bit drunk with it.

* * *

><p>Once they were safely behind Cal's door, Gillian in bare feet with her heels in one hand, they stopped for a moment, catching their breath. Cal's eyes fell over her, catching at her chest, now visible through the thin, soaked material of her blouse, and instantly looked away. Her mouth twisted in a small smile at the feel of someone attracted to her, a flash of excitement flying up through her body for the first time in a long time. She took a breath and watched Cal steel himself. "Drinks?" he asked, finally looking at her, head ducked.<p>

"Yes, please," she said.

Happy to be busy, Cal led her back through his house to the kitchen, shrugging off his coat to reveal a pitch-black polo shirt rolled up once at the sleeves. Gillian loved when he wore that shirt. She bit the edge of her lip, steadying herself as she took a seat at one of his barstools. Feeling a little reckless, she watched him reach for a bottle and place two stemless glasses on the counter in front of her. The blood red liquid splashed into the glass bottoms and they each took a sip. "Do you have anything to eat?" Gillian asked.

_Atta girl._

He smirked at her, _his Gillian, back at last_.

"As a matter of fact," he said, leaning into the counter toward her, "I do."

He opened his fridge and reached for the pink box he'd brought home earlier.

"Remember the client meeting this morning?"

"_You didn't._"

He set the box on the counter and watched her open it and look inside. He gathered utensils from his cabinets and moved the pastry to a plate, handing her the fork. She dipped it against the corner of the dessert, collapsing the layers as if she were gingerly demolishing a high-rise. She moved the fork to her mouth, closed her eyes, and moaned. Cal felt it low in his stomach, and cut his hip on the granite edge.

"Napowéon… you nwoah wha vey caw it in Fwansse?"

He smiled at her. He did know, of course, but couldn't help himself. "No, love, what do they call it?"

She swallowed, looking drugged, and took a sip of her wine. "_Mille-feuille_," she said, cleaning the tines with her tongue and extending the fork to Cal.

"_A thousand leaves_," he muttered silently under his breath. Not one for sweets, he slid it between his lips, tasting her under the guise of tasting the dessert. She watched him closely as he closed his eyes, arousal unconsciously covering his features. He shook his head all of a sudden.

"Are you cold?" he asked, moving around the island to her.

She shrugged a small shrug. "A little."

"Come on, I'll get you some dry clothes."

As she followed him up the stairs, she asked, "Is Em home tonight?" Though the statement was meant to be of mere situational concern, it didn't sound so incidental in the air.

He stopped on a step, half turned back toward her. "No," he said over his shoulder.

"Oh."

A long moment passed before he started moving again, and she behind him. On the second floor, Cal pushed open his daughters' door and moved to her dresser.

"Oh, Cal, I don't think you should do that," Gillian said anxiously. "Not when she's away, and her clothes won't fit me, anyway."

"Gil, Em loves you. She wouldn't want you to be cold, and that's bollocks. You're probably even smaller than she is," he said, pulling out a t-shirt and pajama pants and stacking them in Gillian's arms. "There. Go on, then."

Gillian looked around the room, before cautiously setting the stack on Emily's bed and reaching for her own blouse, unbuttoning the top button.

"Oh! I'll leave you be," Cal said, moving toward the door.

"No," Gillian surprised herself, placing her hand on his arm. "Stay."

She finished unbuttoning her blouse, shrugging it off her shoulders and resting it on the bed. Cal looked away again. "Could you unzip me?" Gillian asked. He turned to look at her suddenly, cheeks flushing when he caught a glimpse of her bra. He glanced away again.

"Yeah," he said, making a small spinning gesture with his index finger, and Gillian turned around. With her unable to see his face, he let his eyes graze her back. She reached behind her to undo her bra, and pulled it from her shoulders. He chewed on his tongue and coughed slightly, before searching for the tiny slider of her skirt zip and steadying his hands, pulling it down until the two edges of the black material parted, revealing Gillian's… _ass_.

She turned around what seemed like suddenly, pushing the rest of the fabric off her hips, now in just a pair of black cotton panties. "Thanks."

Cal swallowed.

"Right," he said, reaching for the dry clothes on the bed. He held out the pajamas for her to step into and she gripped his shoulders to steady herself. _Oh God_, Cal thought the instant he felt her bare chest against his back. _Idiot. Shirt first. Or better yet, she's a grown woman, she can dress herself. Idiot._ When he reached out to help her with the t-shirt, she pushed his hands back slightly.

"Can I," she began, unsteady in her newly relaxed self, "May I take a bath or something?"

_May I take a bath or something?_ This was all becoming too much to handle. He sighed.

"Of course, love."

He gave her the shirt and let her follow him through to his room, and into the master bath. He pushed the curtain back and began to run the tap. Rather than bubbles, which he'd love to give her but was sure he didn't have, he threw two new bars of soap on the floor of the tub, giving the water a milky hue as it filled the basin and steamed up the room.

"I'll let you get to it," he said, turning to leave.

"Will you come back?" she asked tentatively, her bare back turned to him as she dipped a toe in. _Her bare back_.

He swallowed again. This was becoming embarrassing; he hadn't been this inept with a woman since he was fifteen. "Sure."

* * *

><p>Cal allowed himself two more glasses of wine and a quarter of football before going back upstairs. When he pushed the door open, he saw her eyes were closed and he let himself look at her, naked, underwater. He was somewhere around her thighs when her eyes fluttered open, and he instantly searched for an interesting spot on the ceiling.<p>

"Hey," she said softly, as if she weren't nude, in a bathtub, mere feet away from her best friend who'd been in love with her for nearly a decade. "Hey," he replied, as if he weren't mere feet away from his best friend, nude, in a bathtub, whom he'd loved for what felt like forever. He took a seat on the closed toilet and stretched out his legs. "Comfortable?" he asked, noticing her pooled cotton pants and panties near the edge of the feet of the tub.

"Mmm," she nodded. They sat silently for several minutes, Cal focusing on the tiny details of the sinks in front of him, before Gillian spoke.

"Have you ever had sex in a bathtub?" Cal nearly spat out his drink.

"_What?_"

"This bathtub? With Zoe?" Her tone was casual.

He shook his head as if she were speaking a foreign language. The only factor on her person that allowed him to believe Gillian Foster would ever say such a thing was the dark stain still on her lips and the flush in her cheeks, the lazy lolling of her head.

She had to know that he had indeed had sex in a bathtub. He decided to ignore her question.

"It's been _so long_ since I've had sex Cal, so long," she continued, undeterred, sighing deeply. She arched her hips and threw one of her long, toned, _wet_ legs over the porcelain edge, displacing water, as if her admission caused a swell of frustration inside her so strong she had to move to release it. Cal crossed his legs.

"What do you do when no one will have sex with you?"

What an absurd question, Cal thought. Who _wouldn't_ have sex with her? And _everyone_ knows what you do when no one will have sex with you. He took a deep breath.

"Well, you take care of it, don't you love?"

"You take care of it?"

He looked into his drink, not at all wanting to have this conversation.

"Yes, darlin', you take care of it."

"How do you 'take care of it'?"

Somehow her confusion looked genuine. He decided to close the subject bluntly, and focused his eyes on hers, trying to enunciate each syllable clearly without being patronizing.

"You touch yourself."

He watched her eyes darken and the flush creep down her fair Irish skin, between her breasts, through the cloudy water. She shifted and sunk deeper under the seam.

"I mean for girls."

He looked strangely sad for a moment.

"Yeah, for girls too, darlin'."

Her eyes widened a bit.

"Show me."

He knew she had to have some idea what she was doing here; she couldn't be totally oblivious to such matters, nor to his feelings for her. Still, it was Gillian - she was naked, she was wet, and she was asking him to show her how to masturbate, and against his better judgment he set his glass on the edge of the sink, his watch next to it.


	4. Chapter 4

**First, thanks for all the reviews! I love reading them.**

**Here it is, chapter four. It took a few drafts to get it dark and sharp enough for it to be hot yet still regrettable. I think I finally got the scenario down. Beware, though: this _is_**** dark.**

**Don't say I didn't warn you.**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Four<strong>

* * *

><p>Cal caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and was struck for a moment, considering the gravity of what he was about to do, the line he was about to cross.<p>

He shook his head and turned to her, sinking down to the floor near the tub. He dipped his hand into the water.

"Did you mean that, before?"

"Mean what?"

"That you wanted to know… that you haven't…"

She blushed again, now deep currant.

"No need to be embarrassed, love," he said quietly.

Gillian cleared her throat.

"I didn't… I didn't know," she began, taking a breath, "about that.

"I mean, I _knew_, but I've never really needed to until..."

"It's ok. No explanation necessary."

Still, he squinted at her, sensing a minefield. He had to admit, there had been times when… her reactions to certain things, half-memories, little strips of things she'd said… he'd wondered. When it came to Gillian Foster, as his staff would probably attest, he couldn't help himself.

Under his scrutinizing stare, she disappeared underwater, her feet climbing up the opposite tile wall near the tap, before rising again with her hair slicked back. When she opened her eyes, the blue near electrocuted him. Her red lips parted.

_God Almighty_.

When her head tilted in question, he realized he'd spoken aloud. "You're so beautiful," he explained. His hand opened in the air, a gesture of helplessness. Her smile returned, and she raised a soaked arm to stroke his in that way that he knew was intended to be professional but that had always just killed him. A shiver crawled up his spine. His desire for her had become a wall – one he was constantly bumping into. After a moment, though, her mind left the room and her expression turned sour.

"I'm glad someone thinks so."

Cal cocked his head and opened his mouth as if to speak. Though he had a number of choice words for her ex, he kept it shut, and instead grasped the wet hand on his shoulder with his own.

"With all my heart."

He wished she'd consider the words, if only for a moment, but they fell over and off her as easily as the bathwater that surrounded her. He supposed he'd never given her reason to do so. She rolled onto her side, away from him. He swallowed.

"You were right." Her voice seemed small and far away. "The blonde."

His jaw stiffened.

He sucked his gums, the anger coursing through his body instantly and thoroughly. There really wasn't anything to say other than _sorry_, and he didn't think he could continue to apologize for the mounting unfortunate circumstances of her life without his stomach turning sick. What with the wear on her resolve, Gillian was cycling through emotions she'd kept hidden from him for years, each more devastating than the last. He didn't know if he would make it through the night.

"Every time I think of him, I think of her, and Cal…" she trailed off. "I just, the only thing I can think about is them _fucking_," she spat out the word with distaste, cringing. "That's it. That's all. Forget anything else. Forget my wedding, my daughter, our _life_. The only thing I can see is them fucking, like dogs, and her screaming. She just keeps _screaming_." Her hand slipped to her stomach, her voice falling to an almost inaudible decibel. "It's deafening."

Cal was silent. She sat upright in the tub and locked eyes with him. He shifted to kneel and match her, instinctively reaching his body over the edge to hug her tightly. The water from her hair and body dripped down his back, darkening the fabric. She gripped him with everything she had, the strength of her arms surprising him, and sobbed silently into his shoulder. After a minute, he pulled her upright, leading her out of the water and onto the mat, reaching for a towel with one hand, and wrapping it around her.

"_I'm so sorry, love,_" he finally managed.

She quieted herself, wiping her face and swallowing. She looked so small and young now, just hitting his chin in her bare feet, with her short bob wet against her head, no makeup, dwarfed by his towel. The sadness seemed to consume her. Just when he thought his heart was thoroughly destroyed.

"He stopped touching me a few years ago," she nodded, with a watery half-smile. "After the second round of IVF."

He shook his head, unable to comprehend the information.

"Said he couldn't," she kept nodding her head, as if she were trying to make the story make sense herself, trying to believe that it all just _made sense_. It had to.

"Hey," he brought his hands up to frame her small face and held her gaze, "That's _not ok_, all right?" She was still. He brushed the hair on her crown with his thumbs, and looked down to her mouth. The color from earlier seemed to have drained from her lips. "And it is _not _your fault."

He dipped his head and gave her a reassuring peck, then fit his chin against her shoulder and slid his hands down her back.

She melted into him at the touch, her head against his chest.

"_Mm, that feels nice_," she mumbled.

He began to touch her more deliberately, running the blunt of his fingertips down the long, graceful line of her spine. She shivered, a small sigh slipping from her mouth.

_How could that bastard've left you cold in bed?_ He tried to shake the rage from his head. She urged him closer; the tears falling silently down her cheeks, wanting no air between them. He held onto her tightly.

"Frustratin', innit, darlin'?" he whispered into her hair, his hands falling to her waist, "When he won't give ya what ya need?"

She moaned in the affirmative, draping her arms around his neck.

His voice fell low and sincere.

"What, Gil?_ Tell me what you want_.

"_Ask for it._

"_Tell me what you want and I'll give it to you, I promise_."

His tone was almost pleading.

"I promise, Gil."

He heard her muffled reply.

"_I want you to teach me how to do it by myself._"

He wanted so much just to tell her that she wasn't, that she wouldn't be, that if she just asked she'd never have to be alone again, that he'd never leave her side. But he had promised.

He flipped her around so she faced the counter, and leaned her bare pelvis against the cool white porcelain of the sink. She lurched forward, gripping its edges with her hands and staring up at herself in the mirror. In that gesture the atmosphere seemed to change.

He breathed heavily into her shoulders at the reflected image, his eyes darkening. She bit her lip, determined, and nodded at his silent question. He covered her back with his body, running his hands down her sides to hold the delicate flesh at her hips. He released her then pressed her back into the edge. Then again. And again. Each time, she seemed to unravel a bit more, desperation on her features. "Roll your hips," he instructed near silently into her ear. She did, making an entirely new sound at the contact. He pulled her back from the edge and kicked her legs open further, taking one of her hands from the sink, lacing it with his, and bringing it between her thighs. Faced with their reflections during the act, each shut their lids quickly.

Cal left her hand and roamed his around her body, up through her hair, down her narrow back, over her shoulder blades. At first careful, protective touches - the only way he knew to touch her. He heard a moan break from her mouth.

"That's it, darlin'. Just do what feels good."

He brought his fingers to hers again and guided them to her clit. "Softly, at first," he whispered, trying not to linger on the velvet.

He'd thought of her like this dozens, if not hundreds, of times. It was easily one of his favorites, especially if time was sparse. Holding her like this, at this angle, he could pretend she was his, and avoiding her eyes, he could withhold the true weight of the urge from his mind. His hands came midway up her back to press flat into her spine, bending her at the waist. He cleared the hair from her neck and then twisted it in his fingers, feeling slightly intoxicated at the position.

He grit his teeth in restraint, but when she moaned and shifted backwards he couldn't help himself; he involuntarily threw his clothed hips into her, forcing her forward against the porcelain. In a split second he realized what he'd done, released her hair and waist, and looked up to see her face, expecting shock and disgust. Instead, her pupils were blown, her mouth agape.

She slid her hands back up to their place on the sides of the sink, arching her back, and pressed herself into him, never breaking eye contact. All of the blue left her eyes.

"_Do it_," she dared. "Come on Cal, _do it_."

He stood paralyzed for several seconds. When he failed to continue, Gillian restarted the motion of her hips until an awkward accident became a distinct possibility. Soon his hands were on his belt, unbuttoning his jeans, and pushing all of the offending material off without thought. _How many years had he waited to hear those words?_ He glanced at her expression again, attempting to discern the motivation under the mask, but she pushed her hips back to throw him off. It worked. He was suddenly acutely aware of the complete lack of friction.

The words fell from her lips like blood.

"_Fuck me_."

With the phrasing of the demand the realization came instantly, completely, fully formed – slipping in just as the door of reason was closing shut - and he half-wished he hadn't the psychological acumen nor the alternative therapy proximity exposure (_from Foster herself, he'd add_) to conclude it so definitively.

He thought about the points of the argument, why they _shouldn't, couldn't_, why this wouldn't help anything and how it could in fact make things worse, but with each swipe of her slick skin against his, the reasons shifted further into unintelligible mush. When it came to Gillian, when it came to this, he needed a rationale that appealed to his better nature; he wouldn't let himself go forward without one. He searched and found it just beneath the complicated, frustrated arousal, in the tired corners of her eyes and the stiff hold of her lips – _need_. The kind that would hurt if it went unfulfilled. There it was. Not a treatise on behavior, but in that moment, enough. He hoped he hadn't made it up.

He slid his fingertips down her skin, gooseflesh breaking out in their path, and pulled her hips out from her body, away from the sink. For a moment he just absorbed the picture, burnt it into his mind, before running his hand down her back and resting in the dimples above her sacroiliac joints. Then down her ass and between her legs, his fingers unencumbered for the first time. _Scalding. Jesus bloody Christ._

He urged her thighs apart and pressed her horizontal from the center of her back, drew back slowly, and caught her face in the mirror. She didn't blink as he fit his hands purposefully against the angles of her hips. After seven years, he worried the sight was a cruel illusion.

In one move, Cal thrust fully into her. She yelped, reaching out to grasp the faucet, and his hands took the place of hers on the rim, a death grip. _No turning back now._

She tightened, warmed, and grew wet around him. He felt a shudder run through her, and pulled back completely before repeating the move. He would have stopped, he really would have, but _God_ the sound she made brought him that much closer, and he just _couldn't _bring himself to do it. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times, he counted, his hands turning white and practically growing calluses against the sink. And she kept making _those sounds -_ strange, broken tones of pain and sadness and pleasure as that perfect package came more and more undone - and he just _couldn't_. He'd later remember that as the reason.

"Oh God, _Gillian,_" he moaned, hitting the nape of her neck with his lips as he fell against her. He drew his hand diagonally, haphazardly, across her wet hair, his precision wrecked by the feeling he'd waited so long for, crushing his face into her shoulder. "You're _so fucking beautiful_."

The accented consonants rattled sharply in Gillian's ears, sounds not words, feeling not meaning. She let her body yield to his, respond involuntarily to his ministrations, without commentary other than the moans she let shamelessly slip from her mouth. She closed her eyes and allowed Cal to consume her as she supposed her husband had consumed his _sponsor,_ feeling his weight against her, hitting her like a truck, and absent-mindedly tried to remember the girl's name. Probably something Midwestern (she supposed she could Google popular baby names of 1986 and come across it) that would sound strange on Cal's lips if she could only summon it. A bathroom seemed appropriate, but perhaps, she thought, recalling Alec's secretary's reaction to her casual drop-in at State, an office would be more so.

"_Christina_," she whispered sotto voce.

Cal stopped his movement, slipped from her.

"Where _are_ you_?_" His voice brought her back to the room. She thought about falling back into her Best Self, her Considerate Self, but couldn't muster the energy.

"_You know where I am_."

She could see the calculation run across his face, the tiny fragment of hesitation, and _really_ didn't want to have to do any more convincing tonight. She closed her eyes and steadied herself on the basin, reaching down and repositioning just the head of Cal's cock inside of her before beginning a steady movement against it, knowing from evenings when Alec wouldn't go through on the calendar that he wouldn't be able to resist the feeling. She whimpered for good measure, and when she heard a low groan behind her, knew it had worked.

She felt his hands run up her ribs, and he pushed into her once, roughly and deeply, unable to stop himself.

She flew forward toward the mirror. Cal's watch slid off the edge and his glass shattered, spilling the remaining wine against the wall down into the tub. He'd later think that that would have been the time to stop, but she just kept moving and moaning, groaning and gasping – each noise marking an original moment of her spiral and promising another – and in that second he didn't care if it was an act, the sight and sound of collision just urged him on, faster and harder, bruising her skin with his touch.

"Look," he heaved breathlessly. "You gotta do what you gotta do with the others, and I don't care what this is really about, I'll do it, but there's no fakin' with me, love."

When he felt himself losing control, he withdrew, spun her, and lifted her in his arms, bringing her across the threshold and throwing her against his bed. He crawled on top of her in a half-second, never before knowing motivation. He took hold of her hands, pinned them above her head, and brought her legs to his shoulders, knowing that the position would not allow her bluff. In another second he was back inside her. The leverage allowed him to pick up speed and pressure, to push her past the facade. He felt relief when she finally gave in to the telltale signs.

"You here with me, darlin'?"

He moved his hands to rest on the sides of her head, watching her face as he angled his hips until he hit _that spot_ – the one that would change her expression.

"Answer me, _Gillian_."

"_Yes,_" she groaned. He couldn't take his eyes off her, and mercilessly rolled his hips into her until she reddened and looked away, her knees trembling around his neck.

He turned her head back to look at him, and pressed his forehead into hers.

"_There you go, Gil. That's it. You're right there, aren't you?_

"_You gonna come for me, darlin'?"_

He threw a deep thrust fully into her, and brought one of his hands down to lightly tease her clit.

"_Fuck, Cal!_" She moaned, and the authenticity of it put all the others to shame.

"_Ah, there it is! There she is._"

He repeated the motion over and over, not sure how much longer he could take this.

"_Go on then. Come for me. Come for me, Gillian."_

He closed the only space between them, covering her open mouth with his and sliding his tongue between her lips, consuming her completely, her lips, her tongue, her teeth. He felt her begin to convulse around him, speak a name into his mouth, her arms lead around his neck.

He brought his to hold her against him by her waist, and felt her muscles ruthless around his cock. "Christ, Gillian, I'm gonna..." She reached up to entwine her fingers in his hair, rocking her hips into him, until finally he couldn't hold off any longer and thrust one last time into her, swearing loudly into her ear.

It took him about twenty minutes to get his breath back.

* * *

><p>When Cal finally brought himself back on his heels between her legs, he paused to take her in, asleep, her arms bent back, the column of her neck exposed, legs spread. <em>Wet.<em>

Cal reached forward and pushed two fingers inside her. Her body shuddered at the contact, still sensitive but too exhausted to protest. He didn't see her open her eyes, tilt her head, and watch him bring his fingers to his mouth.

She remembered the image of him earlier, the Napoléon, the fork between his lips. He heard her take a shallow breath and mumble almost imperceptibly above him:

"Did you ever… have you ever… thought of me?

"_Being_ with me?

"_Doing this?_"

Once his mind caught up he bit his lip and looked away, stricken. She watched as he weighed possible responses in his mind, before finally deciding on what looked like a hard truth:

"Yeah," he said faintly, nodding slightly, before forcing himself to look at her. "Yes."

He felt the air between them grow thick, difficult. After a long minute he rolled to the side, near her but not touching.

They lay in his sheets for an hour or so, not speaking. Not addressing the obvious shift that had just taken place. She reached out for his hand in the dark, and from the nuance of the touch he knew instantly that, in that moment, she understood everything.

* * *

><p>He woke up to the sound of Gillian rustling at the edge of the bed. She was topless; her only clothes the silly United pajama pants he'd given her what seemed like years before. She had the waistband rolled up on her hips. She disappeared from the room and returned wearing her damp and wrinkled clothes, searched his desk for something, found it, and tied her hair back at the base of her neck. She kicked around the pile of shoes on the floor of his closet and found a pair of flip-flops, <em>never worn, he'd note<em>, shuffling them on her feet. Finally, she turned back to the bed and noticed he'd been watching.

"Mornin'," he said sleepily, cringing slightly as the events began to slip back into his consciousness.

"You like my walk of shame outfit?" She had gravel in her voice.

The reference stabbed him a bit.

"Not as much as the one from before," he said faintly.

She noticed, and finger-combed the hair around her face, straightening her skirt.

She took a seat on the edge of his bed.

He got up and crawled over to sit next to her. They looked through his bay window into the predawn light of the street, the conversation they needed to have like a giant weight in the room.

Gillian turned to meet Cal's eyes. They looked heavy, sad. He reached for her and made an attempt to smooth the creased material of her blouse over her flat stomach, patting it gently. Her hand lay in her lap, palm up, and he caught a glimpse of a lilac print on her skin - three dark spots framed by half-moon indents_._ He glanced at her. She gave him an understanding look and slid her hand around his back, gripping his neck and bringing his head to her shoulder. Her fingers ran backwards through his hair.

* * *

><p>He'd wondered every day of their friendship when she'd wise up and move on, when she realized she wasn't chained here, when she'd see the door wide open and decide to walk out. As he left her in her new apartment, her new life, he worried that this was the day.<p>

He was able to keep it together, holding the images feet away from his mind as he drove her back to Georgetown, until he'd dropped her off and shut her door firmly behind him, locking it to keep her safe in the early hours of the morning.


End file.
